Unit 9, Part 2 Flashcards
“phony war”
- six-month period (October 1939–March 1940) during which no land operations were undertaken by the Allies or the Germans after the German conquest of Poland in September 1939.
“miracle at Dunkirk”
- German army trapped French forces at Dunkirk
- Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to destroy Allied armies at Dunkirk but it was ineffective
- When Hitler ordered his foot soldiers to attack, the British already rebuilt their defenses and evacuated 350,000 troops (French and British)
Vichy France (Marshall Petain)
- authoritarian regime in ⅖ of France (wherever the Germans didn’t have)
- regarded as a Naxi puppet state
Winston Churchill
- prime minister of GB after Chamberlain; wanted to lead GB to victory
- didn’t want to compromise with Nazis
Lend-Lease Act
- principal means for providing U.S. military aid to foreign nations during World War II.
Pearl Harbor
-Dec 7, 1941; Japanese carrier-based aircraft attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian islands
Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere
- encompassed entire region under Japanese tutelage
- intention= liberate the colonial areas of SE Asia from Western colonial rule
- self sufficient community designed to provide mutual benefits to the occupied areas and home country
unconditional surrender
-complete, unqualified surrender of a belligerent nation
Erwin Rommel
- German general; led the Afrika Korps to Libya Feb 1941
- broke through british defenses in Egypt bc of reinforcements in N Africa
Battle of the North Atlantic
-submarines attacked Allied ships carrying supplies to GB
El Alamein
-British forces stop Rommel summer 1942; forced them back across the desert
Battle of Stalingrad
- turning point of the war
- German advance; Hitler was determined to capture the city
- street-by-street conflict during Sept, Oct, and Nov
- Nov 8= Hitler declared that German army had taken the city; Nov 19-20= Soviets attacked and surrounded Germans
- Germans surrender
Battle of Midway
- June 4, 1942; US planes destroyed all 4 of the attacking Japanese aircraft carriers and established American naval superiority of the Pacific
Dwight D. Eisenhower
-American general; lead 5 assault divisions on the normandy beaches on June 6
Normandy Invasion
- led by DD Eisenhower;
- On June 6, 1944, the Allies invade Western Europe in the largest amphibious attack in history
- resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control.
- operation overlord
Battle of the Bulge
- offensive by German troops; slowed Allied advances
Battle of Kursk
- tank battle between Germans and Soviets; Germans lost
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- US dropped atomic bombs there to prevent American casualties
- Japan unconditionally surrendered in Aug 14, 1945
- pres Truman
“land girls”
-women in agriculture; performed jobs usually undertaken by men
“Dig for Victory”
-increase food production;
“night witches”
-female pilots who helped defeat the Germans at Stalingrad
War Labor Board
- settled labor disputes
- US
Albert Speer
- Hitler’s personal architect; made minister for armaments and munitions in 1942
- eliminated waste and rationalizing procedures→ triple production of armaments
Kamikaze
- “divine wind,” suicide missions; against US warships
The Blitz
-German bombing campaign on British cities during World War II against London
Dresden fire bombing
Germany Feb 13-15 1945; bombs that create firestorms; killed 35,000 ppl
Nazi New Order
- Nazi’s plan for their conquered territories
- extermination of the Jews and others that were thought to be inferior
- exploitation of resources (raw materials, machines, food)
- German colonization in the E; use of Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians as slave labor
- civil admins in Norway, Denmark, and Netherlands bc Nazis considered the Aryan akin to the Germans
- inferior ppl= military admins
Heinrich Himmler
- strong believer in Nazi racial ideology; leader of the SS
- put in charge of German plans in the east→ evacuate Slavs and replace them with Germans (this was done to the Poles too)
Charles de Gaulle
- leader of the Free French movement
Free French
- resistance movement against Nazi rule
- created governments-in-exile in London
Josip Broz
- leader of a resistance movement in Yugoslavia
- led a band of guerrillas against German occupation forces
- partisan army⇒ 250,000 men, 100,000 women
White Rose
- group of students and a professor at University of Munich against Nazi order/rule
- distributed pamphlets denouncing the Nazi regime as lawless, criminal, and godless
- caught, arrested, executed
- crushed by Gestapo (secret police)
Col. Count Claus von Stauffenberg
- believed that only the elimination of Hilter would bring the overthrow of the Nazu regime
Madagascar Plan
-mass shipment of Jews to Madagascar → impractical
Final Solution
- annihilation of the Jewish ppl
- admin head= Reinhard Heydrich (head of SS’s security service)
Einsatzgruppen
- strike forces→ round up all Polish Jews and concentrate them in ghettos
- mobile killing units; mass graves of Jews dug by the victims before they were shot
Wannsee Conference
- inform party and state officials of the general procedures for the Final Solution
- January 20, 1942
- solve the Jewish question
death camps
- another solution to the annihilation of the Jews
- Jews living in Germany or placed controlled by German would be round up in freight trains and shipped to Poland, where 6 death camps were built
- Zyklon B= hydrogen cyanide; gas chambers look like shower rooms
- corpses burnt in crematoria
Nanjing
- Japanese conquest
- Japanese soldiers killed, raped, and looted the Nanjing ppl
comfort women
- Korean women who served as prostitutes for Japanese troops
